"He said to them all, If any man will come after Me, let him. . . take up his Cross daily " (Luke 9. 23).
We go all the way to Calvary in faith and there find ourselves identified with the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection. And Calvary comes all the way to us in experience as the Holy Spirit applies that finished work to our lives.
In the Reformation there was, through grace, a great deliverance. The groundwork of Christianity was recovered; namely, justification by faith. But though this was recovered, it was not maintained that the old man was crucified on the Cross, and hence they only refused the exactions of popery, but recognized the flesh as still before God. Refusing the exaction was right; but the retention of that in which the exaction could be made, the old man, was the weakness of the Reformation. "
"I do not see the Cross truly if I only see it as opening a way of escape for me, and yet allowing that in me to escape which has incurred the judgment of the Cross. "
"In the present day (1867) the truth is lowered to the measure of man's need; hence if the need is met, which grace does, the convert makes little or no advance; he rests in the satisfaction of his need, instead of being directed to the scope of God's thought, which only begins with his need. "Where would souls be put if they were simply and definitely instructed in Christ Jesus and Him crucified and risen; connected by faith with the living One, who was crucified, and whose death terminated man in the flesh?" -J.B.S.
"Whosoever doth not, bear his Cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple'' (Luke 14:27).
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Miles J. Stanford (1914 - 1999)
Was a Christian author best known for his classic collection on spirituality, The Green Letters, published in 1964. Theologically, Stanford called himself Pauline and Dispensationalism. He drew upon the written ministries of William Newell, Lewis Sperry Chafer, and a number of the original Plymouth Brethren, in particular John Nelson Darby.Because of Stanford's focus upon the doctrinal content of the Pauline Epistles, some evangelicals have erroneously identified him with hyper-dispensationalism. To address this, Stanford published numerous papers during the 1980s and 1990s clarifying the distinctive tenets of "Pauline Dispensationalism." A collection of fourteen papers were collected into his 1993 book of the same name. Stanford typically signed his letters with his hallmark salutation, "Resting in Him."